Red Silence
by capjack54
Summary: Things get complicated when the CBI team finds themselves protecting a would-be assassin who has just tried to kill one of their own.
1. Under a Killing Moon

Disclaimer: I love Jane and the crew, but they're not mine.

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**1. Under a Killing Moon**

Anywhere else in the world, a Friday night would be, in and of itself, grounds for celebration. However, this particular Friday night – December 19th – and this particular place in the world – the CBI office in Los Angeles – the mood was somewhat more melancholy and subdued than one might imagine. This was not for lack of occasion; what with Christmas less than a week away, and what with California State Prison being one murderer fuller, the office should at least have had an air of grim triumph. The main reasons for this emotional lapse were twofold. One, as the empty desks and sleeping computers would attest, was the inherent lack of people present to feel anything at all, as they'd all left much earlier, at a reasonable time, for merrymaking elsewhere. Two, directly related to number one, was the identities of the remaining people.

Lisbon moved through the office sluggishly; the last two weeks of catching at straws had drained her severely, and unfortunately, as she'd just been informed by the powers that be, the weekend didn't hold any peace and solitude for her either. Sighing, she pulled crisp, glossy photos off the whiteboard, piling them in a folder for further use and trying hard not to notice the mangled 12-year-old that was their subject. For the other occupant of the room, this last part was impossible; even at eleven thirty at night, he could not suppress his unique sight.

A tear in a skirt.

A smashed bottle of lip gloss.

Eternally dilated pupils.

A wristwatch he knew somehow was stolen, but not by her.

He watched Lisbon perform her task wordlessly, though his deeper thoughts were far from here.

"There's a press conference tomorrow at ten," Lisbon said.

Jane raised his head, jerked away from bloody smiley faces and back into the present. "That'll be interesting with no parents."

"It still amazes me that with our technology, we could find her killer, but not her name," she remarked, erasing the name JANE DOE – the only thing left on the whiteboard.

"_I _found her killer," he corrected with the softest of grins. "It's not so hard to believe. Her DNA's not in the system. Her face was unrecognizable. Dental records require teeth to match with. Unless you want an analysis by the Human Genome Project, I think we're out of luck."

"You seem to be the expert on this one," she said sarcastically. "You going to be at the conference to back me up?"

The smug smile dimmed as if in the shadow of something immense. "May I remind you that have not had the best experiences with the media."

Realizing what she had touched on, she quickly crossed to her desk, grabbing her keys and her bag, and tried to think of a good excuse to leave abruptly.

"I have to write out our formal statement still," she said. "It's pretty late. Planning on sleeping here?"

Almost immediately, as was the way with Jane, he regained his sunny demeanor.

"I'm not sure the custodian would live through the experience," he declined. "I'm afraid our last such encounter left him rather… surprised."

The anecdote was meant to be humorous, and yet something in his tone didn't sit quite well with her.

"You okay, Jane?" she inquired gently.

"Of course," he replied with a nonchalant wave. Suddenly, he added, "any plans for Christmas, Lisbon?"

"Nope."

"Liar," came the reply. "You're going to visit your family because your brother-in-law is getting off active duty on the 28th – just in time for New Year's. Oh, and by the way, I'd suggest wearing the red dress, not the black one. The neckline _is _a little low, but at least you have the excuse that it's a seasonal color."

"Very good," she commended him dryly. "Good night, Jane."

Jane sat slumped in the office chair for some time following her departure, considering.

"Oh, what a twisted web we weave," he muttered quietly, then rose and shut off the light, content to make his way through the vacant hallways without the companionship of a friendly light. Tonight especially, the glow of the nearly moon was sufficient to light his way; in any event, he had become accustomed to the dark, as he rarely bothered to turn on the lights at home.

Home.

A neatly typed note.

A hot spotlight.

A bloody grin on the wall.

Shaking the thoughts from his mind, he tried to interest himself in something mundane, such as the quality of the stargazing tonight, as he pushed through the glass front doors of CBI. On the outskirts of the business district, the lights here were dimmer than downtown, and as a consequence, the stars shone brighter than usual, like they had that night— No. As he climbed into his CBI-provided SUV – he'd wanted something smaller, but Lisbon had, after witnessing his driving skills, insisted he needed the extra protection in the likely event of a crash -- he forced himself to fixate in something else.

Spilled coffee on the steering wheel the cleaners had missed.

The dry-cleaned smell of the upholstery.

The new windshield.

The gentle purr of the ignition.

The red light of a bomb winking from the underside of the car.

Wait. What?

For once in his life, Patrick Jane acted independently of his mind. Kicking open the car door, he threw himself out onto the pavement as behind him, in a sudden burst of activity, the brand-new SUV exploded with a shower of glass and a blast of hot air. Stretching out a hand to break his fall, his wrist hit the ground, then his body on top of it with a snap, crackle, popping noise that put the best Rice Crispies to shame. With a grunt, he finished the graceless roll, bouncing to a halt as the flames roared behind him, anxious to consume the luckily vacant vehicle.

Staggering to his feet, Jane's eyes danced over the wrecked car, his mind working on overload. Turning, he was about to make a run for the CBI building when –

--BANG BANG BANG.

His eyes still peeled for his attacker, even with the lids half-closed, he heard the glass panels shatter behind him, and he fell to his knees, already numb. Numb – it was a strange and alien feeling to him, to not be able to feel, to sense, to collect information. With a quiet exclamation of disbelief, he fell back to lie among the scattered remains of the doors. His hands briefly explored the region of his chest and came back laced with scarlet – not from one location, but two. Footsteps retreated into the night – he tried to catch their owner, but his eyes sifted through only shadows before the sounds faded.

He tried with little success to heave himself up off the glass shards, as the door frame he was using as leverage did little more than slice up his hands with the jagged edges still attached to it. Still attempting to think logically, he reached into the pocket of his increasingly stained suit jacket and searched it with shaking fingers; eventually he pulled out his cell phone, whispering words of relief. However, a minute later, when his fingers faltered on the power button, and the phone announced with an angry chirp that it was dead, his only thought was that he was too.

_See, Van Pelt? _he thought jokingly as he drifted further and further away towards his memory palace. _There is no God._

He couldn't die, he told himself firmly. He was mortal, sure, but he couldn't die now. Red John was still out there.

A neatly typed note.

He wondered briefly what the team would think. Lisbon.

A hot spotlight.

His wife. His child. Butchered. In this much pain. More.

A bloody grin on the wall.

In a sudden burst of inspiration, he realized he could leave a note of sorts. Coherent sentences were out of the question, but a simple pictogram, a will in a single image, was within his grasp. With small gasps, he slathered his life's blood on his fingers and reverted back to the finest art known to kindergarteners: finger-painting. When he was done, he sat back and admired his work, vaguely content, but still unwilling to go gently into that dark night.

From the asphalt before him, a grotesquely formed smiley face giggled at him.

-----

Forty three minutes and two and a half pints of blood later, Lisbon returned to the office to get the file of photos on her desk that she had forgotten.


	2. Bitemarks and Bloodstains

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**2. Bitemarks and Bloodstains**

Van Pelt pushed her way through the doors to the office, her stomach still roiled from the scene she'd accidentally witnessed out front. They didn't even have caution tape up yet -- the mess was enough to keep anyone with an ounce of common sense well away. The glass panels lay in a shattered heap, a chaotic mass that had little definition save a single area at its center completely bare of shards, which was, coincidentally, man-shaped. As if to make up for the absence of debris, this eye in the storm was stained with a large puddle of blood, which had somehow managed to flow and solidify in a perfect fromation around a hastily drawn grinning smiley face. At the sight of this, she had decided to head around to the back entrance.

Upon entering the office, her mood was lightened only by the fact that she didn't have to figure out her reaction just yet, as everyone seemed completely absorbed in the office speakerphone around which they were huddled. Her feelings about Jane had been indecipherable before, a strange mix of admiration for his skills, disdain for his lack of faith, and pity for his past; his brush with death had now complicated matters further.

"So what are the doctors saying?" Rigsby asked the speaker, nodding to her discreetly as she slipped in.

"He'll be in surgery for another hour," came Lisbon's voice, stressed and raspy from overuse. "One shot went wild and hit him in the shoulder – that was the lucky one. The other one was worse; the bullet came within a few millimeters of collapsing his lung."

"How long until the drugs wear off and we can talk to him?" Cho jumped in.

"There are no drugs," she replied.

"I thought you said he was in surgery," said Cho.

"He is. They couldn't give him anesthesia."

There was a sharp intake of breath, and Van Pelt covered her mouth. "Why?"

"Some sort of bad reaction – I don't know," she replied, but it was hasty defensive, and she quickly changed the subject. "What I do know is that we have an attempted murder case to work on. Rigsby, you talk to forensics; until I can talk to Jane, we're going to have to operate on guesswork. Cho, I want you going over security footage and traffic cams for a possible ID – start at 11:30 and go from there. Is Van Pelt there?"

"Here, m'am."

"Head over here. I need you to take some casings to ballistics."

She furrowed her brow. "You said there weren't any at the scene."

"I know. An orderly found three in Jane's pocket when he was logging his belongings."

"In his pocket?" said Rigsby incredulously. "What, he was planning on being on the clock right till the end?"

Van Pelt shot him a look that could only be described as scathing. The humor didn't comfort her.

"That's all," concluded a weary Lisbon. "I'll call you if I get any news."

The device started to beep softly after, with a muted click, she hung up.

-----

_A light flared in the dark._

"Mr. Jane? Mr. Jane."

_The light fell in the manner of a dramatic spotlight on a gorgeous grand piano, the harsh glare glinting off mahogany polished like prize silver._

"Mr. Jane, if you can hear me, I need you to wiggle your fingers."

_He walked up to it, running his hands over its gleaming surface Briefly, he put a knee up on the bench and fiddled with the keys, tapping out a lees-than-impressive rendition of "Hot Cross Buns"._

"Confirm – positive response to directions. Mr. Jane, my name is Doctor Muehler. Do you remember what happened to you?"

_Softly, he tapped his foot in rhythm, and suddenly, another beat joined his. From the instrument suddenly issued the wandering melody of Für Elise._

"Dun-a dun-a dun-a dun-a dun, da dun-a dun, da dun-a dun…" he hummed with a grin.

"Amend that – subject is not coherent. What's he humming?"

"Beethoven, I think."

"Anyone have a copy?"

_Turning, his eyes went wide as they fell on a figure he hadn't seen in years. Smiling to proudly reveal several missing teeth, she laughed at his expression._

"_I learned it just for you, Daddy," she said, still playing. "Do you like it?"_

"It's beautiful, sweetheart," he mumbled, fighting back tears. The pain of it seemed a tangible thing, something seated deep in his gut that wouldn't leave without a fight.

_With a flourish, she finished the song and sat back with a pleased shrug. "I love you, Daddy. Mommy and I miss you a lot. When are you coming home?"_

"Not just yet, honey," he forced himself to say; by now his teeth were gritted – the pain had built to that level. "Where is your mommy? Do you know?"

_She sighed. "She says she wants you to find them."_

"Who? Who do I have to find?"

"_The other girls. The first girl told me – you caught the man that killed her, remember? – she told me that there were others. You have to find them, Daddy."_

"I'll find them… I promise…" Breath wasn't coming easily to him now. As if from far away, he heard the song start again.

"_I know you will," she said with another toothless grin. Scootching over on the bench, she put her arms around him, and he hugged her back so intensely she squealed with glee. Still locked in his arms, she turned her head to whisper in his ear._

"_Red John says he'll help."_

Suddenly, her loving arms went cold, and he sat up suddenly, letting out a yell of panic as the scene evanesced into a white hospital room. Details came quickly as they always did for him – a light, warm sheets, masked faces and bad breath, one of those clocks he hated that didn't tick, the unpleasant and yet comforting smell of a sterile environment, green tiles that had gone out in the seventies, a freshly applied saline drip, and a very familiar face caught in a rare moment of powerful expression – Lisbon.

"Jane?" said Lisbon.

"Lip gloss and a miniskirt," said Jane.

-----

"Hold up a minute," said Lisbon. "What?"

"I said, where would a girl from a neighborhood like that – like the one we found her in – get a tailored Prada skirt and designer lip gloss?"

After a half an hour of talking, Jane still wasn't making much sense. She had a hard time following his theories when he was up to his usual smooth-talking, always-grinning standards. After losing one-quarter of the blood in his body and undergoing major surgery, she could have gleaned more information from a doorknob, or, possibly, the doctors, and that was seriously saying something. The two agents posted outside the door were surely hard-pressed not to break their stoic poses and laugh out loud at the attempted conversation going on in room 113.

"Jane, I don't know what you're talking about. Can we talk about what happened last night?"

His eyebrows went up, and a grin crept across his face. "That's quite forward of you." He tutted in a comedy of a motherly fashion. "Tell me, Lisbon, do you deserve Christmas presents, or have you been naughty?"

"I'll forget you said that," she replied tersely, "but just because you're so out of it."

"Out of it? Au contraire, my dear Lisbon, I want in on this case."

"And someone wants your head. I vote we keep you out of this for now."

"Okay, Jane," said Lisbon, flipping shut her notepad and crossing her legs with a sigh as she glared at the pale, drawn, and irritatingly cheerful figure in the hospital bed. "You're in my position. You have one injured agent. You have to solve this case. What do you do?"

"Live bait," he proclaimed.

"Excuse me?"

"Whay bother running around, poking and prodding and asking questions, when, in a few hours, I could have the killer come to me? Set the one he wants up as bait, and—"

"—and this is exactly why I'm in the driver's seat and not you," she interrupted. "I think we'll try finding him the traditional way first – by looking."

"I know things you don't," he taunted her, abandoning this other front.

"Which you're not going to tell me anyway. Jane, you almost died. I think you should sleep on it, don't you?"

"I don't sleep, remember?"

"Not according to the blood tests they ran on you," she said, pulling her Trump. "With all the pills you've been taking, you must be sleeping like a baby these days."

Jane lay quiet, searching her eyes with his, the cheer suddenly gone from him.

"For God's sake, Jane, quit the charades for just a minute and tell me the truth. What's been getting to you?"

For a minute, he seemed on the verge of giving a serious answer, but this was an urge he, as usual, resisted. "Two psychopathic killers, or so it would seem."

"Two?"

"Of course, the shooter… and Red John."


End file.
